Special Student Prints 15

In the summer of 2000, coming to America was very hard because of the war that had happened in Bosnia. When we arrived in America my family and I stayed with a friend of our family. The first couple of months were very hard, trying to find a place to live and a place for my dad to work. After two months passed, my dad finally found a job at a meat packing company. He worked day and night to earn enough money to move out of his friend’s house. After working for several weeks, my dad raised enough money so that we could rent our own apartment in the city. On September 4 2000, I started school at Buder Elementary School. It was my first day at a brand new school with brand new people, and different rules. Walking into school I did not let go of my mom’s hand. They showed us where my classroom was and since I had to go in by myself, I started to cry. The principal asked my mom to leave, but she would not, so she turned around and came back to see me. The principal disapproved of her decision to stay and he

definitely let her know, but she could not understand him so she did not care. I was very happy when I met other Bos-nians that could translate for me. After a while I noticed I annoyed them because they seemed to be frustrated whenever I asked questions. So, I decided to start listening to others and then sound out everything they said. Reading books also helped me learn Eng-lish. It was not an easy obstacle. I tried asking my parents for help many times but they could not help me. It took me a year or so to learn how to speak Eng-lish and to be able to understand people. Through elementary school I was bul-lied and made fun of for making mistakes when I spoke. That is a factor of why I started to teach myself how to speak English. Another struggle that I faced was dealing with the fact that my parents could not speak English. As a young child I helped my parents pay the bills, call customer service, and ask for help at the store. During Thanksgiving, I told my moth-er that I was finally able to read and un-derstand more English. She asked me to read a children’s book to her and I read it without any mistakes. After I finished,

More than a Vacation, a Permanent Location story alma coralicwriter I looked up at her and she started to cry. I

asked her why she was crying. “I’m just amazed at the progress you made over the past few months,” she said. My mother was so proud of what I ac-complished. Even though I came to America with-out knowing English, I worked hard and pursued my dream of being able to under-stand and speak the language. I believed that if I knew the language, my life would be much easier in America and it would help me become successful in the future.

Four out of every five Americans cannot speak there own language good. That statistic is entirely made up. Irregardless of this, how-ever, its extremely ironic that certain Ameri-cans wish to make people who’s first language is not English be able to speak it fluently when they barely have the capability them selves. The invention of text speech has had a dras-tic affect on Americans’ usage of proper gram-mar. It makes one wonder, if people who came to America had more reason to learn English what could have happened? To appropriately exemplify the point being made, there is at least one grammatical error in every sentence above. Whether it was the misuse of an apostrophe, the incorrect tense, or ending a sentence with a preposition, there was at least one thing wrong with each of them.

The degradation, inconsistency, and gen-eral insufficiency of vocabulary in the average American’s arsenal have grown dismal. However, the reason people have reverted back to the basics of speech and the amplifica-tion of slang words can mainly be attributed to the 21st century’s surplus of technology and the average person’s struggle with time defi-ciency. People speak with elocution being the fur-thest thing from their minds, simply for the purpose of time management. It is easier and quicker to express their emotions in a lan-guage that is more familiar to them. It is astounding that people who are accus-tomed to effortlessly expressing their thoughts and emotions in their own familiar languages and dialects are scolded, reprimanded, and disrespected for not learning English based

solely on their present geographical location. The hypocrisy alone is despicable in its very essence. The deprivation of empathy for fellow human beings is appalling. The self-ish, inflated egos of Americans who think the world revolves around them are the reasons why America has a despicable reputation with other nations worldwide. The most precious thing that any one per-son can give to another is their respect. Think about how disrespectful it is to claim that any language can be more important or relevant than another because of who speaks it. Speech is not what is important in this situation; what truly matters is the tolerance towards freedom of expression.

Americans: In Retrospectstory bryce o’nealwriter